Day 20: July 21, 2018
  Participating a community event “KUBA Collection” at Kuba Community Center

A community center in Kuba, Otake-city Hiroshima prefecture, organizes a fashion event  called “KUBA collection” every July.  We were invited to the Event by Ms. Hitomi Kochi, the only staff in the Community Center in Kuba. This is our second time to participated in the Event. 

 It was in January 2017 when we first visited  Kuba Community Center  as a part of the filed work during the 2nd Mindanao-Hiroshima Skill-up Trainings. We choose this specific community center because the Center’s successful development procedures were recognized and awarded as the best community center in 2015 by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT).

Five years before the Community Center was nominated in the competition, Ms. Hitomi Kouchi initiated an interactive event “Manabi-no- Cafe (Learning cafe)” and established a strong social connection in the Kuba community (see the success story (in Japanese) here). Ms. Kouch then utilized this connection to expand it as another creative project/place called, “Chiiki-jin Manabi-no-Cafe (Local people’s Learning Cafe/地域ジン学びのカフェ).” The Cafe acts as an active community hub in the Kuba area and a place for working together to find solutions on various issues in the area. The judges of the MEXT competition valued the Community Center’s effort on making Kuba area active and strong in connecting people which encouraged them to make the area better and vigorous by themselves. “KUBA -Collection” is one of the active events organized by the Community Center.

By participating the Event, not only did the trainees enjoy the cultural activities and communicating with the local people, but they also seemed to strength their team spirit and learned a power of togetherness from the community.